Friday, August 24, 2018

Wading through the state attorney general's thick grand jury report on the Catholic Church is like wandering through a graveyard.

Of the 250 or so accused predator priests whose alleged perverted exploits are chronicled in 1,356 pages, I counted at least 117 confirmed dead bodies. Another 13 of these ancient men of the cloth who were born before 1940 had the dates of their deaths listed in the report as "unknown."

Some of these codgers were born back in the 1920s; the birthday of the most ancient alleged pervert was way back in 1896, seven years before the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane.

The most ancient predator priest whose death could be confirmed was born in 1869, four years after the Civil War ended. Another alleged predator priest laid out in the report had been dead since 1950, before Eisenhower was president. The crimes these priests allegedly committed against children in six dioceses around the state were from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. One alleged victim, identified as Bob from Reading, was 83.

Was this really news? Or something that should have run on the History Channel?

In Philadelphia, the report issued by Attorney General Josh Shapiro brought back memories of the groundbreaking 2005 grand jury report on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia done by former D.A. Lynne Abraham.

"There's nothing new here; it's the same playbook," said Alan J. Tauber, a criminal defense lawyer whose stable of priestly abuse clients include Msgr. William J. Lynn. According to Tauber, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro "took the [Philadelphia] grand jury report and he like replicated that, he served subpoenas, he got the secret archive files; they [the AG's office] basically replicated" the Philadelphia grand jury report of 2005.

Certainly the evasive tactics of the church to keep the clergy's sins out of the courts and the newspapers seemed familiar, as if the six dioceses profiled in the report were all operating out of the same playbook used in Philadelphia.

Which of course they were.

As for Alan J. Tauber Esquire, he was just getting warmed up.

"This report is like the explorer, John Cabot, who lands on Cape Cod in 1497," Tauber opined. "And the press is treating Cabot like he's Christopher Columbus, and he just discovered America."

Ah the press. Over at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where criminal indictments are typically treated as though the prosecutor, face glistening, just brought them down from Mount Sinai, it was a jail break. The Inky's crack team of social justice warriors cranked out seven news stories and a column decrying the church's historic sins as though it had all just happened yesterday.

From the look of the Inky's front page, you would have thought that the terrorists had flown airplanes into skyscrapers again, or we had just landed an astronaut on Mars. Instead, some headline-seeking prosecutor -- Shapiro --had just issued an autopsy report on one of the media's favorite whipping boys, the Roman Catholic Church. And on the Inky's front page, Josh was getting the treatment reserved for unfolding natural disasters.

"Thank God for the criminal investigators and prosecutors," raved crusading columnist Maria Panaritis. "Thank God for the grand jury subpoenas . . . Thank God for the courage of the victims. For without them, Attorney General Josh Shapiro and his team would have had no real case to root out and unveil decades of depravity and systemic abuse by clergy, overseen by complicit [church] superiors."

"Do not, however, thank the Men of the Cloth," Panaritis continued in her sermon. "For many of them, despite their broadcast sanctimony, were among the liars, the hustlers, the actors who protected the predators."

Another Inky story detailed a child porn ring in Pittsburgh run by priests back in the 1970s. Three of those priests were arrested 30 years ago on unrelated sex abuse charges.

Memo to the guys in black robes -- maybe it's not such a great idea to hang onto all those records you've been hoarding under lock and key for so many decades under orders of the Vatican. Have you guys ever heard of a paper shredder? It would have saved you a lot of grief.

Over at the law office of Lynne Abraham, the former D.A. didn't seem upset by the knock-off report that Shapiro had cranked out.

"Didn't you know that imitation is still the sincerest form of flattery," Abraham wrote in an email. She too was struck by the similarities between what happened in Philadelphia, and what happened in the six other dioceses around the state probed by Shapiro.

"It's as though the priests learn how to read and then pass out a script -- 'How to molest little kids,'" Abraham said about the familiar grooming tactics of the alleged predators. As far as Abraham was concerned, she'd be happy if there were more grand jury reports on sex abuse.

"Every prosecutor in the country should be doing the same thing, but it will be the same report over and over again, this time naming thousands," she said. "Sexual perversion runs deep and continuous in the priesthood. After all, it's been going on for centuries."

And to prove it, all you have to do is read the AG's report. As far as Josh Shapiro was concerned, everything old was new again.

"We, the members of this grand jury, need you to hear this," the report said. "We know some of you have heard some of it before. There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere."

Although he was decades late to the party, the AG's claim to fame was record numbers -- after all, the AG had rounded up 300 alleged predator priests who had allegedly raped and abused more than 1,000 victims.

By comparison, the AG pointedly noted in its report, Boston only had between 150 to 250 predator priests, Philadelphia, only 60 predator priests, and Altoona-Johnston, only 50 predator priests.

Josh wins.

In his encyclopedia on all the alleged sex crimes in the history of the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania, Attorney General Shapiro managed to describe a couple of fresh perversions -- notably a priest during the early 1980s who, after allegedly forcing a boy to give him oral sex, allegedly washed the boy's mouth out with a squirt of purifying holy water, a fresh supply of which the padre just happened to be carrying.

The alleged perpetrator, however, Father Thomas J. Benestad, a former pastor who's 73 and retired, the report noted, "vehemently denies" the accusations.

The AG report stated that a church investigation had sided with Benestad and that a local D.A. had said that the alleged crimes were past the state of limitations, so no charges were ever filed. Other than the lurid charges stated in church records by the same dumb guys who write down everything and keep it forever, there was no other proof offered by the AG that these crimes had actually happened.

Then there was Father Gregory Flohr, who, back in 1969, allegedly used a rope to tie up an altar boy in the confessional, before allegedly sodomizing him with a crucifix.

Father Flohr could not be reached for comment, as he's been dead for 14 years.

Now, we all are painfully aware that Catholic priests have done many horrible things to many children over the years, and that the bishops they worked for conspired to systematically cover all of it up. But perhaps some skepticism is required because the charges contained in the AG's report are after all, technically just accusations, and there will be little due process for this clerical crime spree since only two of the 300 priests mentioned in the report could be charged with crimes.

Here in Philadelphia, we found out the hard way that not every accusation of sex abuse turns out to be true.

We had a former altar boy named Danny Gallagher, AKA "Billy Doe," who claimed that a priest allegedly attacked him inside a church, stripped him naked, tied him up with altar sashes and proceeded to rape him.

Gallagher also claimed that another priest allegedly held him captive in the sacristy and behind locked doors, anally raped him for five hours. Gallagher also claimed that a schoolteacher who gave him a ride home in his car allegedly strangled the altar boy with a seat belt while beating and raping him.

All of those lurid accusations were dutifully chronicled in church records, as Gallagher radically kept changing all of his stories of abuse, but none of it turned out to true. The lead detective in the case came forward to testify that he caught Gallagher telling many lies, and that Gallagher had even admitted to the detective that he had made up many of his stories. As a result of the detective coming forward, the D.A. let the schoolteacher who had been convicted of rape out of jail nearly a dozen years early.

It was too late, however, to help one of those accused priests, Father Charles Engelhardt, who had died in jail.

Of course, while the detective came forward to testify, and Danny Gallagher's credibility was going up in smoke, the Inquirer willfully ignored the logical implications, namely that an entire 2011 grand jury report written around the wild but not-yet investigated allegations of Gallagher, an indictment that sent three priests and a Catholic schoolteacher to jail, was not only wrong, but turned out to be a fraud perpetrated by willful prosecutorial misconduct, as testified to by the D.A.'s own lead detective!

On the day the D.A. let the schoolteacher out of jail, all the Inky's social justice warriors were busy, so the newspaper ran a brief AP story.

Now that's what you call objective reporting.

On the witness stand, the detective told a judge how he repeatedly told the lead prosecutor in the case, former Assistant District Attorney Mariana Sorensen, that his investigation had shown that Gallagher was lying, but that Sorensen kept saying she didn't believe him, and finally she replied, "You're killing my case."

It got worse. For eight years, in three different courtrooms, in front of three different judges, former ADA Sorensen and her colleagues in the D.A.'s office had claimed that in 2010, on the day she first interviewed Danny Gallagher behind closed doors, she never took any notes.

And what did the Inquirer do about that? Absolutely nothing, because at the Inky, prosecutors always wear white hats and victims of sex abuse always tell the truth. That's why the Inquirer never prints the names of accused victims, and why they never outed Danny Gallagher, although they have no problems about hanging all of those accused priests in the public square.

In Philadelphia, we have also learned that sometimes, even an accusation from a certified victim turns out to be untrue. That's why it's important to investigate every accusation before we hang somebody.

For example, that 2005 grand jury report on the Philadelphia archdiocese lists a victim named "Ruth" who was repeatedly raped as a child by a predator priest who got her pregnant, and then paid for an abortion.

Decades later, after Ruth got into therapy, she started telling wild stories about black Masses held underground at the seminary, and a ceremony where she was allegedly "married" to the archbishop of Philadelphia, who, supposedly, along with some other priests, proceeded to rape her on the altar.

Detectives determined that the stories weren't credible. A group of sympathetic Catholic women who organized to support Ruth disbanded, after they came to the same conclusion.

When the Philadelphia D.A.'s office put priests on trial in 2012 for abuse, Ruth showed up in the courtroom as an observer. I asked a prosecutor why he didn't put Ruth up on the witness stand. He smiled and said if he did that, it would be a gift to the church's defense lawyers.

Shapiro was on safer ground when he talked about the institutional coverup in the church.

"The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid 'scandal,'" the report said. "Abuse complaints were kept locked up in a 'secret archive.' That is not our word but theirs; the church's Code of Canon Law specifically requires the diocese to maintain such an archive. Only the bishop can have the key."

Yeah, yeah, here in Philly, we heard all that 13 years ago, in the grand jury report on the Philadelphia archdiocese. The playbook when the church discovered they had an alleged pervert priest on their hands was always the same. Send the padre off for evaluation at a church-run psychiatric center. Start out diagnosing the priest by asking him, hey, Father, are you a pedophile? If he denied it, there was no proof.

If a priest had to be removed, "don't say why," the AG's grand jury report said. Tell the parishioners he's on sick leave, or suffering from nervous exhaustion. Or don't say anything. Just ship him off to another parish, where he can set up shop again with new victims. And for God's sake, don't bother telling anybody.

On This Week, David Zubik, the bishop of Pittsburgh, told host George Stephanopoulos, "The church of Pittsburgh today is not the church described in the grand jury report."

The bishop's right, and that applies as well here in Philadelphia.

They may have done it only because they had a loaded gun pointed to their heads, but it's true that the bishops have been forced to clean up their act. In Philadelphia, a recent case with one of Alan Tauber's more notorious clients, Father Mark Haynes, illustrates that point.

In 2015, the cops caught Haynes going on the net and posing as a teenage girl offering naked photos and videos, so the priest could seek naked photos and videos from other girls.

The day after he was arrested, the archdiocese booted Father Haynes out of the rectory. There was no church-ordered therapy at a church-run institution, no cover-up, no transfer to another parish, not even an offer to provide Haynes with counseling.

Instead, Haynes was out on the street. Days later, in every pulpit of the archdiocese, a priest read a statement from the church outing Father Haynes as an alleged predator priest under arrest, and asking any past victims to come foreword.

Two adults did just that, claiming that 30 years ago, they'd been abused by the priest. The statements of the two alleged victims jacked up the sentencing guidelines for Father Haynes, who had pleaded guilty to seven counts of child pornography and destruction of evidence.

In 2016, a judge sentenced the 56-year-old priest to 20 years in jail, a $15,000 fine, and upon his release, ten years of supervised probation. Haynes, whom Tauber described in court as "a woman occupying a man's body," was said to be cooperating with a voluntary laicization process where he would be defrocked.

"The archdiocese's response was an up-to-the-minute textbook response to allegations like this," Tauber said.

Yes, thanks to the efforts of that 2005 Philadelphia grand jury and prosecutors like Lynne Abraham, there's been a radical change in the behavior of the bishops. But it didn't get much notice in the media hoopla over Shapiro's report.

The bottom line of this caper: Shapiro's knock-off report about ancient alleged sex crimes in the Catholic Church didn't tell us anything new. But the coverage of that report now serves as a fresh example of persistent and ongoing media bias.

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comments:

Isn't it contrary to the Attorney General's fiduciary duty to spend so much time and money on a grand jury investigation of long dead suspects, who can never be prosecuted?

This reminds me of when the Superior Court threw out the Monsignor Lynn conviction because the prosecution had introduced so many child sex crimes that happened before Lynn worked in the Catholic Church and some before he was even born.

Ralph - excellent reporting, as usual. The release of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report has virtually resuscitated the local Catholic priest bashing blog which has been practically dormant (between scandals, that is). Repressed memories have been resurrected, with victims alleging abuse at the hands of deceased priests who are really in no condition to defend themselves now.

This report is more than findings of dead or alive abusive priests in Pennsylvania but another fact based report that the catholic church is a criminal organization and should be investigated by the FBI for possible RICO charges.

Dennis, glad to hear you're still crusading. It certainly was a RICO conspiracy, but apparently nobody ever wanted to apply that term to the church.

But on that point, you and I are in complete agreement. One for the history books.

The Philly DA should have also indicted Cardinal Bevilacqua in 2005. And if that corrupt sleaze bag Seth Williams was going to indict Msgr. Lynn for endangering the welfare of children, he should have indicted Bevilacqua too, as well as all of the bishops.

Of course, it would have been nice if Williams had found an actual victim of sex abuse to hang an indictment on, instead of that fraudster Billy Doe, but you can't have everything.

Now that sworn testimony has been presented by a confidante of the Pope, that he chose to ignore promiscuous behavior by a Cardinal, can he be forced to testify regarding pedophile collusion with the Demonrats.

Ralph - spot on as usual. The number of Inquirer reporters covering the recent GJ report was astonishing. For a newspaper that is supposedly watching expenses, how is it that it takes 3 reporters to write one story that appears over and over again on different days. Someone could cure cancer and an anti Catholic Church story has a better chance of running on the front page of the Inky. I hate the term "fake news" but the Inquirer and its perpetual anti Catholic Church persona gives the term credence

As a victim of prosecutorial abuse, I would need to put myself into the shoes of a victim of abuse by a priest and the subsequent cover up by powerful men at the Archdioceses to understand. I doubt if I would care if old or even dead abusers are held up to scrutiny again and again and again.

Would citing a prior report have made any difference to victims, I think not, it would not have made a difference to me. Suffering everyday at the hands of others and feeling powerless,this report serves to helps those victims by again exposing the injustice.

We trust authority figures to police themselves, this did not happen in the Catholic Church nor is it happening at the Justice Department.

Shapiro should have referenced the 2005 report,taking credit for others work is considered criminal. Mainstream media has a job its not to think or question or do research, its to just to run with news.

I do agree that using the crimes of others should not be admissible in a court of law,something prosecutors are good a doing.

How does one hold the church accountable without showing the systematic cover up that ran the length and breadth of their organization.

The Archdiocese and the Justice Department have much in common, no one is allowed to question their authority, they are both excellent at hiding information that they do not want anyone to find and above all good at lording over its subjects with threatening and bullying tactics.

Predators priest were give free reign over innocent children, predator prosecutors are given free reign over innocent citizens. When will a grand jury be convened to hear the abuses at the hands of prosecutors on innocents.

The political climate in America is showing how far people will go to hid crimes, its usually a few voices that unravel the truth. Victims have been crying out for their abuses to be recognized and their abusers punished, be it the Catholic Church or the Justice Department, the public need to hear it again and again to be on guard for future incidents .

The real problem here is that we are now placing obligations on institutions to ignore due process and take action on mere accusations that the accusers were unwilling to make to law enforcement.

Over and over, we hear how a church or college or employer heard about all of these sexual offenses, and did nothing. But what we don't hear is whether law enforcement did anything. That means either 1) they weren't told, 2) they didn't act, or 3) it didn't happen.

How did hundreds or thousands of criminal sexual offenses happen, and there was no involvement of law enforcement? Why did thousands of victims tell everybody in the institution, but nobody outside of it?

We should not be placing burdens on institutions to be the judge, jury, and executioner. That power properly rests with the state because our founding fathers rightfully put it there. A church re-assigning a priest is a perfectly logical thing to do in the face of an accusation that the church is not well equipped to either report or verify. Nor should any institution be expected to report to police what a victim does not wish to be reported.

I propose adding victims to every mandatory reporting law. The best way to stop someone from being a victim is for those who know the most to speak up and let the police do their job.

Society's resources are limited, and we all have a contribution to make. If you are a victim, your contribution has to be preventing others from becoming victims. You can't sit for 30 years with your mouth shut, allow dozens of others to be victimized, and say that you did it for justice while finally collecting a few million in a settlement. The need to prevent harm to the next ten victims outweighs the individual's desire to keep quiet. You also can't benefit from society's protections, while failing to assist society in protecting others.

It's a two-way street. It applies whether we believe the victims or not and it applies whether we believe there was a cover-up or not.

Why hundreds or thousands of child sex abuse complaints were made to an institution and not to the police has been explained.

Victims are often reluctant to tell the whole story for fear of getting in trouble themselves or getting the accused in trouble. They are also usually embarrassed and ashamed. Most nice guy abusers are well liked by their victims so they are conflicted about reporting them. Too, many victims are troubled so may not be believed over an authority figure with a sterling reputation.

Parents of victims often didn't believe a priest or other authority figure actually committed abuse, or didn't want to believe it. Often they were talked into letting the institution handle it internally. In the Boston Catholic Church scandal, the police sometimes knew and cooperated with the church to cover it up. In the Sandusky scandal, the police and child protection agencies investigated in 1998 and the child protection agency ruled the abuse allegation was unfounded.

Things have changed a lot in recent years so AG Shapiro is rehashing ancient history. It's a crime in PA now for an institution to not report a child abuse allegation to the police.

While it might seem logical that a child abuse victim should report to police to prevent other victims, it just doesn't work that way. The law does not require victims to report abuse because of the stigma attached and the psychological trauma. I don't think we'd want a situation where a child abuse victim was jailed or sued by later victims because they did not report their abuse.

You make some fair points, but I don't follow as to why reporting something to one figure of authority (somebody in the church) and not another figure of authority (the police) happened with so much regularity. We're not talking most of the time - we're talking nearly every single time. I'm struggling with the improbability that so few cases reached the police, out of thousands. Those that did, such as the 1998 Sandusky case and the Billy Doe case, clearly seem to have been erroneous.

My gut tells me there is another motivation for reporting to the church and not the police, and that is some favorable outcome - such as getting rid of an unliked teacher, boss, priest, etc., or getting some form of settlement.

I disagree that the shame of one victim outweighs the benefits of preventing hundreds of other victims. We will never eliminate these types of crimes if they consistently take decades to uncover. We don't treat domestic violence this way - we prosecute regardless of the wishes of the victim. So why not in sexual abuse cases?

As for today, I'm not sure that the institution actually does need to report. In PA, it's only someone in a supervisory capacity, correct? A janitor, I believe, still has no obligation, nor does a passerby.

Finally, Shapiro is grandstanding, no more no less. I simply don't care about something some dead priests did 60 years ago. They tell us there are thousands of people involved in human trafficking, and the best Shapiro can come up with is some 1960s dungeon? Awful.

Even Shapiro's grand jury report proved it wasn't "nearly every single time" that the police were not informed. The news media generally did not report the police and DA coverup part of the story.

"Pennsylvania grand jury finds some police and district attorneys helped Catholic church cover up priest abuse"http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/pennsylvania/mc-nws-grand-jury-law-enforcement-priests-20180823-story.html

The PA law now says a "school employee" is a mandated reporter so a school janitor would be legally obligated to report suspected child abuse. Given prosecutor overreach in the Spanier case, it is a good idea to act as if the PA mandated reporting law covered every adult. You never know when a prosecutor may want to trump up a case against a passerby.

The pope stated the answer to the claims of his knowledge of cardinal McCarrick being an a abusive priest and doing nothing about it and the answer to abuse by clergy in the catholic church is "Silence and Prayer".

Shouldn't every catholic be asking the question isn't Silence one of the reasons why their church is in turmoil today ?

As a long time observer of the Burning Man Festival, there was a definitive declaration this year to vilify the Church and a direct assault on the authority of the Pope. We are in the throes of a Nihilist Revolution orchestrated by Journalist Secular Crusaders and their political partners of the lowest order.

Except there is not much to be done because there are investigating ancient history. The Catholic Church corrected the problem. Big problems remain in the state child protective agencies and law enforcement.

In the three weeks since the release of the Pennsylvania report, the attorneys general of Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico and Nebraska have also announced that they intend to investigate sex abuse and coverups by the Catholic church.

This must be a nationwide investigation and it must also include investigations done by the FBI. If the findings are the same in these other states as in Pennsylvania the catholic church should and must be labeled a criminal organization no different then the mob or Mexican cartels.

nothing but grandstanding .....for every legitimate abuse claim, there are corresponding fraudulent claims of abuse, such as the case of Billy Doe/AKA Danny Gallagher here in Philadelphia.....just because you are a drug dealing, lying drug addict, doesn't automatically qualify you as a victim of abuse...in his case, he had a corrupt DA looking for his next job, Seth Williams (now a federal prisoner himself) and an office filled with equally corrupt DA's like Mariana Sorenson, Patrick Blessington, Mark Cippoletti and Evangeline Manos, who went along for the ride .......this case in particular should be investigated by the Feds as it put 3 innocent men in prison, one of whom died while chained to a hospital bed....bring Joe Walsh into court again to present another round of testimony of the evidence withheld from his investigation of the accuser on that case, bring Sorenson into court to explain why those vitally important notes from that danny Gallagher interview about his claims of abuse against those men were withheld from those defense attornies 8 years ago.....Prosecutorial Misconduct as ruled in court by Judge Bright a year and a half ago.....

it's nothing but a scam, organized extortion with the intention of bankrupting the Catholic church.....that recent report from Shapiro was nothing but a retread of ancient history that unfortunately, still succeeds in creating fresh headlines for those higher job seeking political hacks who talk out of both sides of their mouth...........

Well saidI have written to AG Shapiro on numerous occasions seeking an investigation of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct on the Englehardt, Shero, and Lynn cases. Response has been nothing.Same with so-called reporters at Phila Inquirer, Mike Newall and Maria Paniritis. Same result - nothing. Their anti-Catholic bias is so bad, Paniritis is now writing puff pieces about Mark "I'll lobby anyone for a buck" Singel. Priest dies handcuffed to a bed for a crime he did not commit and the best the esteemed Phila Inquirer has to offer is puff pieces for a lobbyist

Asking the justice department to police themselves would be like putting Trump in charge of the Russian investigation. The reason for these reports on clergy abuse is because the church did not take the proper action when abuse was apparent, either they did not believe or they were powerless to do anything. No one in the church hierarcy was recomending abusive priest be turned over to the proper authorities for justice.

No one was allowed to question authority,especially the churchs authority. The justice department and the media went after the predators and made an impact,hopefully stopping future abuse and alerting the public to the cover up.

The justice department is not going to police itself, we need the media to step to the plate and the Inky is not interested. Once they have condemned a defendant they can not and will not reverse themselves, they just move on to the next victim.

The Inky does not believe that someone who has been accused by the prosecution of a crime could possibly be innocent.

Inky jornalist are part of the prosection team, their main job is to condem and incriminate, not find innocence,much like the prosecution. The Inky has no interest in an opposing point of view.

Supreme Court noninee Kavanaugh said during his hearings that he does not live in a bubble, nor do judges or juries, who reporters influence with article after article on their views of the condemned.

Its easier to take what a prosecutor is spoon feeding them as truth than do any research on what really happened or the reason behind an accusation or indictment.

Abusive priests found victim after victims to abuse much like prosecutors who go on to incrimiate new innocents with the aid of the Inky.

How dare predator priests hide behind a cassock robe and how dare predator prosecutors hide behind the laws of the land. So many people know what prosecutors do to innocents,but no one speaks up due to fear. Proseuctors silence their victims and witnesses from speaking the truth, by not exposing predator prosecutors when it becomes apparent makes the Inky complicit.

Are you kidding? You get more information in one article on this blog that you do on the multiple repeats run by Phila only so-called newspaper. I've yet to see the Inquirer run one word on the misconduct committed by the Philly DAs office in withholding the Detectives notes from Fr Englehardt and Mr Shero's defense - yet they've fun multiple articles about withheld/falsified evidence in other cases. And when they get a chance to take a shot at a Phila Police officer - they are public enemy #2 after a Catholic priest

I wouldn't want to be a police officer in this city no matter how much they wanted to pay me....it's open season.....and the Inquirer won't buck the system even when there's a gross miscarriage of justice like the Fr Engelhardt and Bernard Shero trials orchestrated by Seth Williams....

You forgot elected officials, I thought they would be number one as its easy and acceptable to disparage anyone who is even remotely political, remember "all politicians are crooks", as a federal prosecutors is fond of saying.

What we read in the Inky is what prosecutors are saying, none of the reporters care to get it right, if a proseuctor proclaims someone is guilty the Inky runs with it.

The gymnasts who were victims of Larry Nassar reported that they told coaches, therapists and administrators about the abuse, multiple victims claimed that Michigan State University has been complicit in the abuse,partly in order to protect the schools reputation.

Now more egregious lawsuits are emerging about a current member of the schools board of trustees who when he served as an athletic director, went to great lenghts to conceal Nasars conduct.The continued fallout from the scandal is far from over.

Turning the other way is what the Inky is doing with prosecutorial abuse, call it misconduct or overreaching, its abuse of citizens. The Inky has knowledge of the abuse and as an organization decided to overlook the abuse.Their financial dilemma is the prosecution is the hand that feeds while their moral dilemma are the cries of victims that go unheeded.

I hope you can monetize the inside story of Bishop Bransfield and the Gay Parade at St. Charles Seminary. You spent years defending the Church against charges that in the grand scheme is indefensible. The Gay Life was institutionalized in the Church and this Pope may be the 1st to come out of the closet.

You have to admit it has been a very bad week for the catholic church.

After the release of the Pennsylvania report of clergy sexual abuse and the intentions of other states in this country to follow up with their own investigations I think it would be safe to call the catholic church a criminal institution, with the godfather, boss or leader or what ever term you would like to use residing at the Vatican.

I thought it was appalling when the pope on Thursday called the victims and survivors of clergy sexual abuse the "great accuser" simply putting it calling people satan for attacking the church by bringing sexual assault allegations to light. If anyone has read the transcripts of his homily at Domus Sanctae Marthae he sounds more like Jim Jones than a pope of the catholic church.

But the big question in this country is when will our government get involved in a investigation regarding the attack of so many innocent children by catholic clergy and the subsequent cover-up by the catholic church. We should be following in the footsteps of Ireland, Australia and Germany whose governments already have begun investigations.

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